Any discussion of Florence in those already fabled days must begin with the acknowledgment of it as the most glorious city in the world. Here, learned men debated Neoplatonism while the most sublime artists in history brought their work to ever-greater heights. There was no better time—or place—to be alive. Only a year or so ago, our leader, Lorenzo de’ Medici, il Magnifico, upon learning that King Ferrante of Naples was scheming to assassinate him, rushed straight to the citadel of his enemy to demand an explanation. Not only did he survive the encounter, he emerged with the king as an ally. This is the sort of character necessary to impress us Florentines.
These were days when anything seemed possible. We did not feel bound by the rules that governed the world’s more mundane places; we took for granted our exceptionalism. Our building materials came from our city, the sandstone of our houses quarried within the town’s medieval walls and held together with mortar formed with sand from the Arno. Those golden-brown façades hid the monstrous arrogance behind the quest for our cathedral’s magnificent dome, designed before anyone knew how it might be built. Yes, the Duomo glorified God, but one could not separate the achievement from the genius of the men behind it. We all marveled at Brunelleschi’s creation, never balking at his background as a goldsmith and clockmaker. We were not trapped by our pasts. At least our men weren’t.
For most girls, the city was less vibrant. They stayed inside, where they would not risk bringing dishonor to their families, waiting to be told who they would marry, warned against even being seen looking out the windows of the palazzi in which they dwelled. But I, Mina Portinari, had grown up with a freedom shared by few of my peers, thanks to my unconventional grandfather Teo Portinari, an extraordinarily learned man who, after serving the pope, embarked on a quest to help Cosimo de’ Medici and his heirs find books lost since the days of antiquity. When he returned to his native city, the upper echelons of society embraced him. While my friends learned how to run complicated households, my grandfather taught me to read Latin and Greek and took me to il Magnifico’s villa to visit his giraffe. I fed it an apple, delighted at the feeling of the beast’s impossibly long tongue against my hand. Nonno let me dine at his table with artists and great thinkers, my parents too busy with their own lives to take much notice. His guests called me charming and complimented my bright blond hair, competing to see who could bring forth my eager laughter. Until I grew old enough to stir in them other longings.
That was when my mother interfered. Which explains why I have no more intellectual evenings. Instead, I help her balance household accounts, manage servants and slaves, and am only allowed out of our palazzo to go to church or, accompanied by my mother, to visit friends. When I complained to my compatriots, they teased me mercilessly. I was living the way they had always done, and they had no sympathy for my plight, leaving me to wonder if never having known the delights of academic conversation would be preferable to missing them so keenly.
Almost by accident, I started spending more time in the confessional, an action that bore no relation to the sin, or lack thereof, in my life. I was not always kind to my brothers. I sometimes disobeyed my mother. I often fell asleep while at my prayers. But, fundamentally, I considered myself a virtuous person. I feared God and obeyed His commandments. Yet I found I was saying more in confession than I intended. Not that I had been hiding sins. Rather, I had settled into a habit of giving arduous explanations for my misdeeds, to the point that Father Cambio, a priest at Santa Trinita, the church where my family heard Mass, started to laugh.
“How old are you, Mina?” he asked.
“Sixteen last month. How old are you?”
“Thirty-two.”
“So ancient! I would not have guessed.”
He did not balk at my impertinence. “You’re old enough to be married. Has your mother spoken to you about this?”
“More than I would like.”
“What would you prefer?”
“I’d prefer she let me return to dining with my grandfather and his humanist friends. Is that a sin?”
He laughed again. “No, in and of itself, it is not a sin. But you ought to be careful about the company you keep, lest you be led astray.”
“So far as I can surmise, the only imminent danger I face is succumbing to boredom after repeated exposure to the minutiae of household management.”
“When you marry, your husband will rely on you to handle all such matters. It is a critical responsibility. We are not all so fortunate as your grandfather when it comes to our daily lives. Most of us will never comb the libraries of German monasteries in search of ancient manuscripts.”
“I never dared hope for a life half so interesting.”
He studied my face, his eyes full of sympathy. “I have an idea that might help. When I see you next for confession, I will have a book for you, something we can read and discuss.”
I felt a thrill of emotion as I walked up the church steps the following week. Books had always held an important place in my life, and there had never been a shortage of them in our home. My father, a wealthy wool merchant, considered them essential household objects but more out of a desire to appear cosmopolitan and educated than because they stirred his intellect. Like all successful businessmen in Florence, he cared very much about enhancing his family’s reputation, and our city valued a classical education almost as much as it did money. For me, though, books spoke to my soul. I needed them more than food or water. Or so I believed at the time. But when I saw the title of the slim volume Father Cambio pressed into my hand, I felt only disappointment.
“You do not like it?” he asked.
“It’s not that,” I said. Petrarch’s De vita solitaria—On the Life of Solitude—was not what I had expected. “Petrarch…”
“You wanted his poetry.” Father Cambio smiled. Despite his age, he was an attractive man, with dark hair and green eyes, built more like a knight than a priest. A bit of a waste, I thought. “I could hardly be the one to encourage you to drink in his adulation of the fair-haired Laura, whose own locks couldn’t have been brighter than yours.”
My face flamed. “No, it’s only—”
“We neither of us is here for poetry. Come, I shall hear your confession.”
That day, I did not speak so long to him as had become my habit, nor did I feel lighter after he granted me absolution. This left me with a lingering confusion. Back at home, I opened the book. I believe that a noble spirit will never find repose save in God, in whom is our end, or in himself and his private thoughts, or in some intellect united by a close sympathy with his own. Petrarch suggested that leaving a crowded city was an excellent idea for one seeking repose in God, no doubt a view influenced by his own family’s exile from Florence. But how did this pertain to my life? I could no more leave Florence than I could choose my own husband; what was the point to contemplating either? Furthermore, the concept of finding repose in God sounded tedious to me. I did not much care for solitude in those days. Then, the poet suggested that solitude did not preclude friendship, and as I continued to read, his prose offered a welcome balm for my turbulent emotions. It will never be my view that solitude is disturbed by the presence of a friend, but that it is enriched. If I had the choice of doing without one or the other, I should prefer to be deprived of solitude rather than of my friend.
These sentences grabbed me, opening my mind to the idea that two seemingly contradictory positions might be reconciled in a most satisfactory manner. I longed to speak to someone about this, longed for the company of my grandfather and his friends, but had no one but my brothers to whom I could turn.
Until I went back to confession, where Father Cambio awaited me, ready to discuss more than my as yet underwhelming sins.